#with all the sleek pictures n glossy pages of diagrams n shit

[hua-fei-hua]

when i was a kid i really resented the fact that my mom kept forcing us to check out nonfiction books alongside our fantasy novels in order to "broaden our minds" and basically ensure we were learning Real Factsies(tm), but now that i'm older, if i don't go off and learn some Real Factsies(tm) every so often, then i'll end up finding my fictions dull and uninspired

#i guess i just also hated how kids' nonfiction tended to present itself. unless they were like those slim encyclopedias #with all the sleek pictures n glossy pages of diagrams n shit #bc i remember reading a nonfiction book abt seahorses for adults called 'poseidon's steed' in like fifth grade and loving it #adult nonfiction books (in my limited experience) tends to read more like storytelling except everything is real and has citations #also now that i'm an Adult(tm) with More Life Experience(tm)(tm) (this is a cue for my older mutuals to laugh at my precociousness or w/e) #i find it easier to connect to the text-- in this case a book abt a guy called paul otlet n his contributions to information science #which is a thing i am Very Much interested in bc the internet has spoiled me with its indexing and yet i love analog information #also it was right next to two volumes from the 60s detailing various historical book burnings #and indeed the intro talked abt how this man's life's work was handily destroyed by the nazis who thought he was cataloguing garbage #learning abt all the lil guys in the 20th century who fuckin loved organizing information n bitched abt there being information overload #they are So Real they would have looked at the modern internet n gone 'this is too much make wikipedia the main page' #花話 #anyway i doubt i'd have appreciated reading so much had i not read fiction so avidly growing up #and i rebuke the idea that the fantasy novels taught me nothing at all bc stories teach us abt being people #and demonstrate experience better than a more academic n factual analysis/write-up or w/e #yes i do love to learn abt philosophy in its like. rigorous academic state or form or w/e. #but that's diff from seeing it in practice in the real world or in people's stories n how it Affects Things